“Want?”
Darcy lowered his eyes. The shame of confession—of such a complication to so many other matters which remained misunderstood and unexplained—howdarehe lay yet another question over them?
He felt her move before he saw it.
Not a step—an intention. The space between them retreated, as though it had learned her shape and yielded to it. She approached with care, as if the floor itself might object, her gaze steady, purposeful, far too calm for what it did to him.
His breath broke loose from him, shallow and uneven. He leaned forward despite himself, drawn by the simple fact of her being nearer—too near—until sense struck hard enough to make him lift a hand.
“Wait.”
The word came rough, torn from him. He held his palm up between them, not touching her, not trusting himself to. His fingers trembled. “I did not… when I asked you here, it was not for this. I meant only to speak. To learn what might be learned.” A swallow, badly managed. “I would not—never—impose myself upon you.”
She did not retreat. Instead, she edged closer by a fraction that undid him far more completely than any boldness could have done. Her voice, when it came, was gentle—almost curious.
“And have you learned what you wished to know?”
He shook his head. He could not trust words now. The room had contracted to her breath, the line of her mouth, the small, dangerous certainty that she was waiting—not passive, not teasing, but present. Offered.
As though she had decided to see what he would do, and would not move until he did.
Something in him gave way.
The restraint he had built over a lifetime—duty, judgment, the careful governance of self—fell back as if it had been waiting for permission to fail. Hunger surged up, fierce and unreasoning, eclipsing fear and consequence alike.
Darcy reached for her. With no gentleness or caution, but the full, desperate claim of a man who had resisted too long and could no longer remember why.
He found her mouth.
Not fully—not cleanly. It was the barest collision, breath and heat and the ghost of contact, enough to scorch without satisfying. Her lips parted in surprise against his, and the sound she made—small, startled—cut straight through him.
Fire flared behind his eyes. Not metaphor.Memory.
The dream roseup unbidden: flame curling where it should not, light bending toward her as if it knew her name, his own hands burned raw from holding it back. He tasted smoke where there was none, felt again the terrible certainty that if he did not interpose himself, she would be consumed.
But not now.
He dragged his thoughts back with violence and pressed closer, as though proximity alone might banish prophecy. His hand slid to her waist, the curve of her fitting him with a rightness that stole what breath he had left. For one wild instant, there was only the exultation of it—of holding her, of knowing her real and warm and alive beneath his hands.
And then the cost came due.
Pain tore through his chest, sharp and immediate, as if something had closed its fist around his heart. His head reeled. The room tipped. He tasted iron and knew dimly that he was no longer entirely upright.
Elizabeth broke from him with a cry, hands fisting in his coat as she pushed him back to his feet, fear stark on her face. “Stop—Darcy, stop!” She stared at him, horrified. “You’re—oh God—you are not well—”
The house answered.
Not with warning, not with a sigh, but with a brutal wrench, as though the ground itself had been seized and shaken. The floor lurched beneath their feet. The mantel gave a sharp crack as porcelain leapt and struck against itself. Somewhere overhead, something heavy shifted and fell.
Darcy staggered, his vision bursting white at the edges. Pain tore through his chest again—hot, blinding—and he tasted blood outright this time, copper and salt flooding his mouth as he fought not to fold in on himself.
The candle slid.
Elizabeth gasped—his name half-formed—and the flame tipped toward her skirts.
Darcy moved without thought, without balance. He lunged, caught her sleeve in a desperate fist, and dragged her back as the candle struck the carpet and flared. The motion wrenched another broken sound from his chest, but he did not release her.
Elizabeth tore free only to stamp the flame out at once, heel grinding wax and wick into the rug as the room continued to shudder around them. The fire died with a sharp hiss.
